Rated 5 / 5 stars2012-11-22 12:36:12

Beautiful nocturne! Your harmonic progressions are lovely and sound fresh among other pieces in the audio portal. The various instances of augmented sixth chords made me smile really big, as few people in the classical section here take advantage of them. In terms of the right hand, nice use scales and trills. :)

My main critique is that this piece does not sound melodically driven for a Chopin-inspired nocturne. The nocturne form, at least viewed through the lens of Chopin and John Field, tends to be characterized by a song-like melody over the top of a steady, rhythmic accompaniment. While this piece has pleasant harmonies and ornaments, I can't recall a main melodic idea after listening. The structure seems much more free than that of a Chopin nocturne, meandering from one progression to the next without repetition to build a solid framework or clear melodic material to be developed throughout the piece.

I would have liked a slight transition to the section starting at 2:11. It was a nice change of pace, but the silent transition didn't do much for me. And perhaps this is nit-picking, but I thought the trills were slightly overused and lost their effectiveness by the end of the work.

Listening to this piece was enjoyable, but it sounded more like an improvisation in the nocturne style than a fleshed out and developed composition. I'll have to check out more of your work, but this piece makes me think that more consideration to melodic material and structure would help propel your music to the next level.

Thanks for the feedback! It's a pretty old piece of mine (more than one and a half years at least!) - if you want to check out something a little more structurally and melodically refined, I can recommend the more recent Dark Enigma.

What you say about the melodic framework is certainly true (most of it was indeed improvised), though I'd argue that the larger structure as a whole, with a rough A-B-A', is pretty in line with many of Chopin's nocturnes (no. 20, C# minor, for example). The silent transition was actually changed to be just that, though I'm not sure how I would've handled that place today.